In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Robert Martin, co-author of a recent study on industrial farm animal production, explains how a powerful and intransigent agriculture lobby has successfully fought off attempts to reduce the harmful environmental and health impacts of mass livestock production.

by Christina M. Russo

In 2008, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production released a landmark report, Putting Meat on The Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America. The commission’s study condemned the way the U.S. raised its cattle, pigs, and chickens and made a sweeping series of recommendations on how to reduce the severe environmental, public health, and animal welfare problems created by the current system. Last month, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) released a study analyzing the fate of these reforms and reached a stark conclusion: The power of the industrial agriculture lobby had blunted nearly all attempts at change.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360 contributor Christina Russo, Robert Martin — the executive director of the Pew Commission’s 2008 report and now the Food System Policy program director at the CLF and co-author of its recent study — discusses what went wrong and how reforms can proceed. According to Martin, the key is building public pressure on the Obama administration and Congress to demand changes from an intransigent industry that Martin describes as “having more money than Big Tobacco did in efforts to regulate cigarettes and the personality of the National Rifle Association.” One hopeful sign, said Martin, “is that there are more and more people who are concerned about where their food comes from and how it’s produced.”

Yale Environment 360: Can you highlight the findings of your latest report?

Robert Martin: There was a lot of activity generated by the Pew report, and in a very important way it focused the debate in a way that hadn’t happened before. But what we found was that very little progress had been made and that in almost every case things had worsened in the last five years.

Our number one public health recommendation [in the 2008 report] was to ban the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics, and we define therapeutic as treating sick animals that have a diagnosed microbial disease. We also had a provision for disease prevention — that is, if several animals in a flock or herd became sick, you should treat the whole flock or herd at therapeutic levels for very short period of time to try and kill the bacteria.

The practice that is common now is daily, low-level amounts of antibiotics added to the animal feed or water to really suppress bacteria long enough for the animals to get through the production system. And what this does is it leads to very serious antibiotic resistance issues that are housed in these operations but make their way into the human population either through flies carrying the resistant bacteria out, wild birds carrying them out, bacteria being flushed out in the waste of the animals, or by being carried out into the community by workers.

In the last five years, Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York has sponsored the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would ban for use in animal agriculture the top seven antibiotics important in human medicine. Unfortunately, that legislation has gone nowhere. Eighty percent of the antibiotics sold by weight in the country are used in food animal production. So, while we can make strides in reducing inappropriate use of antibiotics in human medicine, if 80 percent of the antibiotics are being sold and used in food animal production, clearly that is where we can now make the most important strides.

Yale Environment 360: What did you find in terms of the environmental impact of the Pew report?

Martin: On the environmental side there is a very troubling aspect. At the time of the release of the Pew Commission report, only about 34 percent of the waste generated by these operations was permitted under Clean Water Act permits; the only way you can regulate Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations — or CAFOs — is through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act. So the Pew Commission recommended that there be a full inventory of these operations, because we don’t even know where all of them exist. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said these operations generate 350 million tons of waste per year. The EPA says they generate 500 million tons of waste per year. And so we said ‘Look, you need to do an inventory and you need to bring more of them under permitting.’

The Obama administration had just started to find out where these operations were. But because of pressure from the industry, they abandoned that effort late last year before the election. Every [presidential candidate] gets so focused on winning Iowa and Ohio and Minnesota — states that are heavy CAFO states — that they abandoned that effort to inventory operations. And there are more of these operations coming online everyday. The environmental damage is getting worse, and the federal regulatory agencies that should be stepping up aren’t.

As for animal welfare, the animals are overcrowded and they stand either in or over their own waste all their lives. And the only reason why they don’t die in those situations is because of the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics. And the only reason why the overcrowding can go on from a waste standpoint is because these swine barns are built over concrete waste pits that are flushed into an open cesspool twice a day. The waste is then collected and then sprayed untreated on fields surrounding the CAFOs. So, the way these animals are overcrowded with lack of natural movement, which is a very serious animal welfare issue — it’s just really all part of one system.

In looking at all these areas, I was asked by a reporter what kind of grade I would give progress on the Pew Commission’s recommendations, and I answered that I’d give the regulatory [agencies] and lawmakers an ‘F.’ Because really no progress has been made. These are enormously powerful industries. I always say that Big Ag has more money than Big Tobacco did in efforts to regulate cigarettes and the personality of the National Rifle Association. I think it puts it in a context people can understand.

Yale Environment 360: The Pew Commission’s report was released with the hope that Obama would take the lead in industrial agriculture reform, which the Bush administration had not done. What indication did you have that the Obama administration would take these recommendations seriously to begin with?

Martin: When Obama was a candidate in the Iowa caucus, his platform really read like an aggressive support for sustainable agriculture. He talked about checking the growth of the large industrial animal operations. Then, during the North Carolina primary he was shown a copy of the Pew Commission report and he said he endorsed the findings and he would work to implement its recommendations. And I take him at his word. But when you put the former governor of Iowa as the Secretary of Agriculture — Tom Vilsack, who had stated publicly there was no problem with antibiotic use and food animal production — well, Vilsack’s interest was in not really rocking the boat.

In January 2009, as Obama was taking office, the Economic Research Service at the USDA said that antibiotics tended to be overused in large-scale animal operations. And a month or two later Vilsack said we are using them judiciously, there’s no problem. And what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seems to be doing now is promulgating regulations — they are voluntary guidelines — only at the consent of the regulated. They are only willing to do what the industry says it will accept.

I would guess Teddy Roosevelt is spinning in his grave. He was more worried about the ‘meat cartel,’ as he called it, than Standard Oil and the railroads. And that’s why the Food and Drug Administration was formed.

Yale Environment 360: What are the most concerning environmental impacts of industrial farm animal production?

Martin: In the fields around these operations, it’s also an over-application of phosphorous, which over the long term will harm the productivity of the land because the phosphorous will burn out of the soil. And I think the public health link to this environmental damage is a real concern, as well: What kinds of pathogens are being carried in this waste into the waters that can make people sick?

There is also a very serious air quality problem. Studies by the University of Iowa and University of North Carolina have shown that up to five miles downwind of these operations children have an increase in asthma-like symptoms because of the particulate matter that is blown out of these barns by the ventilation systems.

Yale Environment 360: The Pew report said that, pound for pound, pigs produce four times the waste of a human. Can you describe in more detail the crude process of waste disposal at these facilities?

Martin: In a typical industrial swine operation, there may be 5,000 animals housed in two barns. The barns are built over concrete pits that are probably three feet deep. The animals stand on metal-slated floors, so their waste drops through the floor and is collected in these pits under the building. And two times a day the pits are flushed into what is called a waste lagoon, which is really an open cesspool containing the liquid and solid waste from the animals. When that pit fills up, the waste is either pumped into a truck and hauled a very short distance and sprayed on fields or pumped directly from the cesspool onto surrounding fields near the CAFO — with no treatment.

Not only is it serious environmental degradation because a lot of the waste just runs off into surface water, but swine waste contains a lot of the same pathogens that human waste does; physiologically, pigs and people are very similar. Untreated swine waste is 200 times more concentrated than treated human waste. And treated swine waste is 75 times more concentrated than human waste. But swine waste is not treated — it’s just held in these lagoons and pumped onto fields. And whatever is in that waste goes into the ground water and into the surface water.

Yale Environment 360: Do you think the environmental movement has appropriately seized on industrial farms as an environmental issue?

Martin: I think some of the national environmental groups have been a bit slow on this. It’s an interesting thing — people who live closest to these operations become environmentalists very quickly, because they see the damage not only to air quality, because of the stench, but they also see the damage because of the over-application of the waste.

Yale Environment 360: Undercover videos have shown animals being violently abused in the U.S. Are the efforts by animal welfare groups successfully bringing attention to the problems of the industrial livestock operations, even more so than environmentalists?

Martin: I would really have to commend the Humane Society of the United States for a couple of reasons. Number one, they did the really tough work going state by state — in some states to ban gestation crates for pigs or in other states to ban [confined] cages for chickens. They finally got the attention of the industry because everywhere they went up against the industry, the Humane Society won. So, they deserve a huge amount of credit for using the animal welfare concerns as the symptoms of a sick system.

Yale Environment 360: How does the recent purchase of Smithfield Foods by a Chinese company factor into this larger storyline?

Martin: The purchase of Smithfield by a large Chinese company is very concerning. Number one, it is a huge export of U.S. energy and grain and water to China in the form of pigs. There is a virtually insatiable appetite for pork in China. So I worry that we will be a net loser from an environmental and energy standpoint — and all we will be left with is the hog [manure].

One of the things the industry always says is, ‘Oh my god, we have to feed 10 billion people in 2050.’ The fact is there was a report called Agriculture at a Crossroads in 2008, and they said that we annually raise enough food calories for 10 billion people. The problem is what we are doing with those calories and the waste and spoilage of those systems. There is about 48

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percent wastage, especially in developing countries. But also about 80 percent of the corn we raise in the country is fed to animals that we then consume, which is an inefficient transfer of energy.

Yale Environment 360: There are so many actors in your report. Which actor could provide the most reform if it wanted to?

Martin: I think clearly if the president said, ‘I want to do X,’ then the agencies in the executive branch would have to follow suit. If he told the FDA that more voluntary guidelines weren’t the way to go on antibiotics, and he wanted rules and not suggestions, and he wanted a program to ratchet down and eliminate the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in food animals, it could happen. They did it in Denmark. They eliminated the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in swine production and their productivity has gone up. They have more piglets per sow, fewer infections in the swine herd, and fewer infections in the human population.

Yale Environment 360: It’s the five-year mark of the Pew report, and your assessment is quite grim in terms of reform. So how can these recommendations be implemented in the future?

Martin: The chairman of the Pew Commission was the former governor of Kansas and he had a saying that I quote all the time: ‘A politician begins to see the light when he feels the heat.’ Our conclusion in the report was that an informed and engaged public is essential to getting the attention of policy makers and regulatory officials. So a hopeful sign, actually, is that there are more and more people who are concerned about where their food comes from and are interested in how it’s produced. I think the only optimistic thing is the growing number of people who are worried about the food system.

POSTED ON 19 Nov 2013 IN Business & Innovation Business & Innovation Policy & Politics Pollution & Health Sustainability Central & South America North America

By Danielle Nierenberg

By Gary Naban  – Posted in Grist

It is puzzling that Monsanto’s Vice President Robert Fraley recently became one of the recipients of the World Food Prize for providing GMO seeds to combat the effects of climate change, just weeks after Monsanto itself reported a $264 million loss this quarter because of a decline in interest and plummeting sales in its genetically engineered “climate-ready” seeds. And since Fraley received his award, the production of GMO corn has been formally banned by Mexico, undoubtedly seen as one of Monsanto’s major potential markets.

The World Food Prize, offered each year on World Food Day, is supposed to underscore the humanitarian importance of viable strategies to provide a sustainable and nutritious food supply to the billions of hungry and food-insecure people on this planet. Ironically, what is engaging widespread public involvement in achieving this goal is not Monsanto’s GMOs, but the great diversity of farmer-selected and heirloom seeds in many communities. Why? Because such food biodiversity may be the most prudent “bet-hedging” strategy for dealing with food insecurity and climate uncertainty.

Consumer demand in the U.S. has never been stronger for a diversity of seeds and other planting stock of heirloom and farmer-selected food crops, as well as for wild native seeds. One of the many indicators that the public wants alternatives to Monsanto is that more than 150 community-controlled seed libraries have emerged across the country during the last five years. And over the last quarter century, those who voluntarily exchange seeds of heirloom and farmer-selected varieties of vegetables, fruits, and grains have increased the diversity of their offerings fourfold, from roughly 5,000 to more than 20,000 plant selections. During the same timeframe, the number of non-GMO, non-hybrid food crop varieties offered by seed catalogs, nurseries, and websites has increased from roughly 5,000 to more than 8,500 distinctive varieties.

And yet, these grassroots efforts and consumer demand are largely being overlooked by both governments and most philanthropic foundations engaged in fighting hunger and enhancing human health. Even prior to the partial U.S. government shutdown, federal support for maintaining seed diversity for food justice, landscape resilience, and ecosystems services had begun to falter. Budget cuts have crippled USDA crop resource conservation efforts and the budgets for nine of the 29 remaining NRCS Plant Materials Centers are reportedly on the chopping block. As accomplished curators of vegetable, fruit, and grain diversity retire from federal and state institutions, they are seldom replaced, leaving several historically important collections at risk.

It is as if Washington politicians and bureaucrats were failing to recognize a simple fact that more than 68 million American households of gardeners, farmers, and ranchers clearly understand: Seed diversity is as much a “currency” necessary for ensuring food security and economic well-being as money. These households spend on average hundreds of dollars each year purchasing a variety of seeds, seedlings, and fruit trees because of their concern for the nutritive value, flavor, and the quality of food they put in their bodies. While it should be obvious that, without seeds, much of the food we eat can’t be grown, few pundits recognize a corollary to that “food rule.” Without a diversity of seeds to keep variety in our grocery stores and farmers markets, those who are most nutritionally at risk would have difficulty gaining access to a full range of vitamins, minerals, and probiotics required to keep them healthy.

However, despite what portions of the government and agribusiness don’t seem to fathom, consumer involvement in recovering access to diverse seed stocks since the economic downturn began in 2008 has been nothing short of miraculous. Some call it the “Victory Garden effect,” in that unemployed and underemployed people are spending more time tending and harvesting their own food from home orchards and community gardens than they have in previous decades. Public involvement in growing food has increased for the sixth straight year, according to the National Gardening Association. But even financially strapped gardeners are not shirking from using their limited resources to purchase quality seeds of heirloom and farmer-selected vegetables. The Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, reports that its sales of seed packets have nearly doubled over the last five years. Another nonprofit focused on heirloom and wild-native seeds — Native Seeds/SEARCH of Tucson — saw its seed sales triple since the end of 2009. And there are between 300 and 400 other small seed companies supported by consumers in the U.S. that offer seeds by mail-order, by placing seed packets racks in nurseries and groceries, or via on the internet.

Nevertheless, the U.S. may now be approaching the largest shortfall in the availability of native and weed-free seed at any time in our history due to recent climate-related catastrophes scouring our croplands, pastures, and forests. While a few large corporations focus on a few varieties of corn, soy, and other commodity crops, there is unprecedented demand for diverse seeds to be used for a great variety of human and environmental uses in this country, and elsewhere.

It has become painfully clear that America needs to recruit and support a whole new cohort of dedicated women and men to manage seed growouts, nurseries, and on-farm breeding and crop selection efforts for the public good. To further evaluate crop varieties for their capacity to adapt to climate change, we will certainly need many more participants in such endeavors than a charismatic Johnny Appleseed or two. They must stand ready to harvest, grow, monitor, select, and store a diversity of seeds for a diversity of needs in advance of forthcoming catastrophes. And they must value acquiring and maintaining a diversity of seedstocks, much as a wise investor relies on a diversified investment portfolio. Diverse and adapted seeds are literally the foundation of our food security infrastructure. Without them, the rest is a house of cards.

Fortunately, courageous efforts have been initiated to rebuild America’s seed “caring capacity.” The collaborative effort known as Seeds of Success, which is part of an interagency Native Plant Materials Development Program, has trained dozens of young people at the Chicago Botanic Garden to collect seeds of hundreds of native species over the last few years. In the nonprofit sector, Bill McDorman of Native Seeds/SEARCH has organized six week-long Seed Schools around the country that have trained more than 330 gardeners and farmers to be seed entrepreneurs.

Elsewhere, Daniel Bowman Simon, now a graduate student at Columbia University, has helped hundreds of low-income households (eligible for USDA Food and Nutrition Program assistance) to use their “SNAP” benefits to purchase diverse seeds and seedlings of food crops at farmers markets in order to produce not just one meal, but many. In light of recent unjustified critiques of the SNAP program during farm bill debates, it is surprising that fiscal conservatives did not acknowledge how providing financially strapped families with seedstock may be one of the most cost-effective means of reducing food insecurity over the long haul. It is tangibly giving the poor the “means to fish” rather than a single meal of a fish. With more than 8,150 farmers markets in the U.S. today, compared to 1,775 in 1994, the potential for this seed dissemination strategy to help meet the nutritional needs of the poorest of the poor has never been greater.

Regardless of whether U.S. states ever require GMO labeling or ban GMOs entirely as Mexico has done, there is abundant evidence that we need to shift public investment — from subsiding market control by just a few “silver bullet” plant varieties, whether genetically engineered or not, to supporting the rediversification of America’s farms and tables with thousands of seedstocks and fruit selections. Instead of spending a projected forty to one hundred million dollars on developing, patenting, and licensing a single GMO, perhaps we should be annually redirecting that much public support toward further replenishing the diversity found in our seed catalogs, nurseries, fields, orchards, pastures, and plates. With growing evidence of the devastating effects of climate uncertainty, now is not the time to put all of our seeds into one basket.